Lucinda, BrandNew Witch
by Niarbeldoon
Summary: Lucinda is a muggle-born entering her first year at Hogwarts. She never knows what to expect, and she's not sure how to react when one of her classmates starts acting really, really weird. She turns to her DADA teacher for help...
1. Witch? Me?

**Hey! This story is set after AFTERMATH, which I haven't, um, finished yet... But, never fear, I will finish it... eventually... Yeah. And I actually do have a plot figured out for this one, even though it is not my strength, and I'm not sure it's free of glitches... but, read and enjoy! (and review!)**  
  
Lucinda was a muggle-born witch. She didn't talk much, but she thought a lot. Her father was a professor and her mother was at medical school. None of her family knew that Lucinda had any magic in her, not even Lucinda herself. She had had an ordinary life for almost eleven years. She had ordinary school friends, ordinary parents, and ordinary room, ordinary stuffed animals, and ordinary hair. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to Lucinda Knox, and nothing ever gave her reason to really believe that magic existed.  
  
Until her eleventh birthday.  
  
The letter arrived on the morning of August the first. Lucinda saw it lying on the kitchen table, apart from the rest of the mail. It was rather big, and written on some sort of thick, yellowed paper. A purple wax seal held it together. As she curiously picked it up, a swift movement caught her eye and she looked sharply out the open window to see a large owl flutter past the house and out of sight.  
  
_Owls don't fly during the daytime, do they?_  
  
She turned the letter over in her hands. It was addressed to her personally, she noticed, and how strangely, too...  
  
Miss Lucinda Knox  
  
The Smallest Bedroom,  
  
321 Bessemer Avenue  
  
etc.  
  
Lucinda, although curious, was a little unnerved by it. She did not open the letter, but ran to her mother.  
  
"Mom!" she knelt on her parents' bed and shook her mother awake. "Mom, wake up! I got a letter, but it's weird, I want you to have a look at it..."  
  
Lucinda's mother grunted. "I'm sleepy." She twisted around in the bedclothes and took the letter anyway. She examined the address and the wax seal with an expression of bafflement on her face, then broke the seal and silently read the contents. She laughed.  
  
"It must be just some prank, Lucy," she said, handing her daughter the parchment and settling back into bed. "Read it if you want. Probably a funny birthday card from one of your friends. Now let me sleep for another few minutes."  
  
Lucinda slid off the bed and walked across the quiet hallway to her bedroom, where she sat on her bedroom floor and opened the letter.  
  
"Dear Miss Lucinda Knox,  
  
"We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Below is a list of required school supplies for your first year. Please be at Platform Nine and Three Quarters at King's Cross Station on August the Thirty-first to board the Hogwarts Express.  
  
A weird list of school supplies followed, including a cauldron, black robes, a pointed hat, books Lucinda had never heard of, and a magic wand. The books were for odd subjects that Lucinda knew for a fact did not exist: Transfiguration, Charms, Potions... she needed A Standard Book of Spells, Grade One, and a later note informed her that first years would not need a textbook for "Defense Against the Dark Arts".  
  
_Funny. Wonder who sent it? Probably Derek, he's weird that way.  
_  
She curiously looked over the letter a second time, then, shrugging, stuffed it in her sock drawer and went downstairs to get started on her birthday party.  
  
Lucinda's birthday party was ordinary. She opened her presents with the ordinary amount of cheering and thanking. She ate her ordinary birthday cake. By the time the guests had all left, she had completely forgotten about the letter.  
  
But as she carried an armful of new stuff up the stairs to her bedroom and prepared to get started on The Book of Three, her eyes strayed to the coffee table.  
  
There was another letter sitting on it, just like the first.  
  
Lucinda was not the type of girl to overreact. There was a rational explanation for everything. So she continued up the stairs, dumped her armload on the bed, and opened her sock drawer.  
  
The old letter was still there, just as it had been that morning.  
  
She slammed the drawer shut, raced down the stairs, and picked up the second letter. She opened it. It was exactly like the first, with the list of required supplies and the bogus request to be at King's Cross on August 31. She laughed to herself.  
  
_King's Cross doesn't have a platform nine and three fourths. That's stupid.  
_  
She packed the second letter away in her sock drawer as well.  
  
The next day, two more "Hogwarts" letters arrived. Lucinda's father took them from the mail slot, read through them, and tossed them aside. Another one arrived that evening, and was curiously examined by Lucinda's family.  
  
"Some sort of prank?" her mother asked.  
  
"A secret admirer?" her father asked, jokingly.  
  
"I don't know," Lucinda replied truthfully.  
  
_It's exciting though, whatever it is._  
  
The letters kept arriving. One or two or even three at a time, dropping through the mail slot, appearing on the kitchen table, stuck inside the screen door, wedged under the doormat, lying innocently on Lucinda's bed. Her sock drawer was bulging with the unidentified letters.  
  
But besides the letters, and Lucinda's writing a silly story on her computer, nothing else happened that month that was out of the ordinary – until the twenty-fourth of August.  
  
Lucinda was sitting on the floor of the hallway, reading The High King. The doorbell rang, and Lucinda, startled, got up to answer it.  
  
She opened the door.  
  
_I'm sorry, I don't think I know you._  
  
The man smiled down at the brown-haired girl. It was a funny smile. He had messy black hair, with just a little bit of grey at the temples. There were scars all over his face and his glasses were just a little crooked.  
  
"Hello, Lucinda," he said, leaning on the doorframe. "Are your parents home?"  
  
_How does he know my name?  
  
Maybe he's been sending the letters!_  
  
Lucinda startled, closed the door.  
  
Her mother appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Is somebody at the door, Lucy?" she asked, drying her hands. Lucinda nodded.  
  
"Don't shut the door on people, for pete's sake, Lucy," her mother said, exasperated. "Good grief, try to be polite..." She walked to the door and opened it again. Lucinda hid behind the hallway closet door, as it stood open.  
  
She could hear her mother talking with the strange man. She hid her face in her father's winter coat.  
  
"I'm sorry about Lucy," her mother was saying. "She's a bit shy."  
  
"That's fine," he said. Lucinda discovered that she liked the sound of his voice. "Er... I'm here about those letters... I assume you've been receiving them?"  
  
"Yes, we have," Mrs. Knox replied, a slight bit of bafflement in her voice. "You've been sending them, have you?"  
  
"Not me, personally. But I guess you could say that..." They had moved into the hallway. Lucinda peeked around the door.  
  
"I assume you don't understand what the letters were about, really, being muggles... so of course I'll try to explain while I'm here."  
  
"I've been sent here to... well, fetch her," he explained. "School starts in a week."  
  
_Who is he?  
_  
"School?" Mrs. Knox demanded. "That school is a real place, is it? I suppose you want me to believe that magic exists, and you're going to teach my daughter how to do it?"  
  
"Well, yes, that's the idea," he started.  
  
"I don't believe in magic."  
  
"Alright," the man sighed. Lucinda saw him pull a small wooden rod from inside his light denim jacket. "I'll show you a little. Seeing is believing for muggles, right?"  
  
He pointed the wand down the hallway and said something that Lucinda couldn't understand. He said it loudly, and Lucinda could almost feel the air crackling with electricity as he did.  
  
A white-silver shape, like a ghost, leaped from the tip of his wand. It looked to Lucinda like a transparent, silver stag. The phantom galloped silently around the hall for a few seconds. Her mother gaped at it. As it passed the closet door, Lucinda felt a strange feeling spread through her; an unexplained, almost happy feeling. Then the stag dissolved into the air and was gone.  
  
"How did you do that?" Lucinda's mother stuttered.  
  
"Magic," he said simply. Then he turned to Lucinda, as she stared wide-eyed at him, no longer trying to hide.  
  
"Would you believe, Lucinda Knox," he said with a faint smile, "That you're a witch?"


	2. The Leaky Cauldron

**_Here, finally, another chapter. This is not a cliffhanger, because really, how can you have a cliffhanger about shopping for school stuff? Sorry if this turns out too much like Sorcerer's Stone, gorl version. It'll be different later. Hope you like it, and if you read it, please review me! _**

Lucinda's mother and father went into the living room with the stranger and didn't come out for an hour and a half. Lucinda intended to spend her time standing stock still in the hallway to try and hear their conversation. She couldn't listen for very long, though; she had only gathered that the man's name was Mr. Potter and the Headmaster's name started with a "D" before her mother, suspecting, stuck her head out the door and told Lucinda to go outside.  
  
Lucinda went outside. The sun was beating down from the sky; cicadas hummed from the trees and the hot air seemed still and heavy enough to be cut with a knife. Lucinda's mind was buzzing with questions as she sat down on the porch steps.  
  
_Is it possible that it's real?  
  
Am I really a witch? Can I learn to do magic like he did?  
  
What if he's wrong? I really don't think I'm a witch.  
  
Is this some sort of cult?  
  
Wonder if I'll actually go to that school! It would probably be really exciting!  
  
Weird... I'll either go to my old school or some other place in one week... weird!_  
  
Lucinda's mother appeared on the porch with a strange look on her face. Mr. Knox and Mr. Potter followed.  
  
"Lucy?" her mother asked.  
  
"What? Am I going?"  
  
"We've... well, we've spoken about it, and the more I hear about it the less unbelievable it sounds. I think... well, I... your daddy and I have decided, it's up to you."  
  
"Up to me?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Well... good grief... do you want me to go?"  
  
"It would be fascinating, I'm sure. I would approve of it. But it's your decision. You'll probably want to go back to – to normal school with your friends..."  
  
"Well, I..." The truth was, Lucinda wasn't particularly attached to anyone in her class. She had only invited two people to her birthday party. And she had only been in this neighborhood for about a year.  
  
But she was hesitant. She looked at Potter as he stood in the shade of the porch roof.  
  
"Am I really a witch?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
"The headmaster knows. Never been wrong before."  
  
"Are there kids there my age?"  
  
"Lots. You'll make tons of friends."  
  
"Is it dangerous?"  
  
"No! No more dangerous than football."  
  
"Can I really do magic?"  
  
"Yeah. Talent depends on the person, but a witch is a witch."  
  
"Is it a good school?"  
  
"Best place I ever went," he answered. "It's the best way to spend seven years of your life, in my opinion. And of course you can come home for the holidays."  
  
Lucinda bit her lip. "What kind of magic can I learn?"  
  
He shrugged. "Potions. Turning things into other things. Disappearing things. Flying on broomsticks; Quidditch – that's fun. You'd love it."  
  
Lucinda looked back at her mother, wide eyed. "Mom, I want to go. Really."  
  
Her mother nodded slowly. "Alright... ok, yes... tuition...we'll give it a go... where will we get her school supplies?" she asked Potter. "All these weird books – I really don't think I could buy them in any bookstore. Do you have to order them?"  
  
"Oh," Potter said, "That's not a problem. "I'll take her to get her stuff, if you want, I know where to go..."  
  
An hour later, Lucinda sat, excited and bewildered, in the back seat of her parents' car. Skinny, dark-haired Potter sat in the front seat, and her mother at the wheel. She had insisted on coming along, and she had followed Potter's directions as she drove. Potter had said that he didn't know how to drive, and Lucinda thought that was really weird.  
  
The car was now parked on the side of a dingy street. People walked back and forth, visiting the shops that lined both sides of it. They were normal shops, selling things like antiques, coffee, clothing, bagels, and clocks. But the one that they had parked outside of was a pub. It was rickety looking, with dusty windows and a faded sign above the door.  
  
"Are we going in there?" the brown-haired girl asked Potter interestedly. "They don't look like they sell books."  
  
"In where?" Lucinda's mother asked, peering out the window. "All I see is Agatha's Antiques and The Coochy Canary Pet Care store."  
  
"No, mom, I'm talking about the one in between them. See the sign? It says... Leaky... Cauldron..."  
  
"There isn't one in between them, Lucy, they're stuck together."  
  
"Nuh uh, mom! Look, it's right in front of you!" Lucinda pointed past her mother's face at the glaringly obvious storefront. She hesitated. "Can't you see it?"  
  
"I don't see a – oooooh," her mother said slowly. "There it is... I think... how could I have missed that thing?"  
  
Potter had gotten out of the car. Lucinda, feeling more and more curious with every minute that passed, leapt out of the car too and slammed the door behind her. She and her mother followed Mr. Potter up to the door of the pub.  
  
The door creaked shut behind them as they entered. The air smelled like woodsmoke. Ancient wooden chairs and tables stood around the room, and were occupied by the strangest people Lucinda had ever seen. She stared around at them, trying to have a good look as Potter ushered her and her mother quickly past the bar to the back.  
  
An old man in a battered top hat stared at Lucinda over his mug of steaming tea. Three women in bizarre dresses and jewelry chatted animatedly around a table in the corner; one of them was wearing tall, red leather boots. The stringy-haired bartender gave Lucinda an odd look as he caught her staring.  
  
"'Afternoon, Harry," he said to Mr. Potter, with a nod. Mr. Potter nodded back and smiled slightly.  
  
Several other people seemed to know who Potter was, Lucinda noticed. Lots of people were nodding and waving; one elderly witch with no teeth gestured toward Lucinda and asked, "New student?"  
  
"Yeah," Potter said, and pushed Lucinda through a wooden door out the back of the pub.


End file.
